


dare you speak of heaven?

by kaminoko_x



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Kurosaki Karin, BAMF Kurosaki Masaki, BAMF Kurosaki Yuzu, Character Study, Future Fic, Gen, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Swearing, but no we die like men, i should have gotten a beta, okay basically the Kurosaki women are kickass, un-betaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 06:04:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19223134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaminoko_x/pseuds/kaminoko_x
Summary: (I dare.)Defining moments in the lives of the Kurosaki family.





	dare you speak of heaven?

.

.

1.

falling moon

.

This is how Isshin gains his bankai:

Isshin is nearly two hundred and he is three steps from a prodigy. His records will one day be overshadowed by his younger cousin Kaien, by his subordinate Hitsugaya, by his enemy Ichimaru, but before their times, he sets the record for fastest academy graduate and youngest to reach shikai and mastery thereof. He’s determined to set the same records for bankai.

Isshin has never claimed to be particularly smart, but he does know the value of research - particularly when there’s so many other intelligent people who actually have their bankai. He decides to speak with captains, as his many as his clan status can connect him to.

“I can’t give you details - don’t know them myself, given bankai’s a real personal issue. But I can tell you that most shikai and the few bankai I’ve heard of usually involve some kind of fighting. If you aren’t willing to spill blood to get to bankai, do you even want it?” Yoruichi winks at him, “Besides, what’s a little blood between you and yourself anyways?”

Isshin nods along. It sounds about right - his own shikai had meant fighting storm and gravity to get to Engetsu. He goes home, ready to earn his bankai.

“Fight me!” he demands as soon as he drops into his inner world. Over the next few years, Engetsu proceeds to hand him his ass again and again, haughty and with barely any effort. Isshin feels like a fool slinking away with his tail tucked between his legs, except it’s his zanpakutou and you can’t run from yourself. Isshin isn’t sure if that makes it worse.

His next advice giver isn’t someone Isshin is expecting to get results out of, but he can’t go around asking nobles and leave him out. Politics, bleh.

“The achievement of bankai is another step in mastering oneself,” Kuchiki Ginrei intones formally, “Thus, one must prove mastery over one’s zanpakutou, the reflection of one’s soul. When one can command one's zanpakutou, one is truly in command of oneself.”

“Do as I desire,” he tries to command Engetsu, who does not even deign to respond to such an idiotic suggestion. Her disdain seeps through the dead midnight air.

Isshin sighs, and tries again.

“Well, if you're looking for tips… Every soul is unique, so every soul of souls is, too. Figuring out what is required is a riddle all on its own, and a hundred Shinigami will land on a hundred different answers,” Kyoraku says with an easy smile, “My Katen Kyokotsu is a fickle woman, with ever changing moods. But she is a trickster - her riddles for me were literally riddles.”

It’s been five years since his quest for bankai started. Isshin is learning to lose his impatience, meditating on Kyoraku’s words while he waits for Engetsu to cool off. It is a full month before she meets him in his dreams again.

“Will you riddle me?” he asks, watching her keep vigil over the sea. She is sleek with the new moon tonight, draped in dark pearl greys, deep shadows hiding her face.

_What use do I have for riddles?_

“Well,” he says, “Fighting hasn’t really worked, and neither has demanding. You never give me obstacles or present mysteries for me. I figured I would try this too.”

 _You are getting desperate, my own._ There is barely any inflection in her voice. It’s an observation without judgement.

“I am,” he concedes, “Because nothing I do seems to be acceptable to you.”

_You are my own. Everything you do is acceptable to me._

“Not for bankai,” he says.

_Bankai is yours if you want it._

“I _do_ want it. But Kyoraku gave me truth - you’re a riddle that when solved, will give me bankai. I just don’t know how, or what you want.”

 _And you think I am a mere barrier to your power?_ she asks, dry as a desert.

Isshin laughs ruefully, “Bad wording, sorry. I just meant - this whole time I was looking for you to present a challenge, but the challenge in itself is to figure out how to get to bankai. You aren’t necessarily the problem, but you are here.”

 _I am here to watch you try_. She tilts her head to look back at him, only one eye visible because of its faint glow. _But you are my own. So I will tell you this: I am your sword, and you. You are mine_.

“I know I’m yours.”

 _Do you?_ Engetsu turns and _looms_ , tranquil darkness melting into menace. Isshin takes a step back, warily watching the stars start to turn.

 _Do you?_ Her shadows burst forward to lash at his throat, dragging him up to face her. She flares silver-bright as the stars wheel wildly behind her, moon blooming to fullness. Isshin wheezes and struggles half-blind at her hands, panic crawling up his throat as her light surges over him, as her grip tightens -

Isshin’s eyes snap open as he gasps for breath, scrambling to his feet.

 _Do you?_ Engetsu whispers, echoing into the night. Isshin unsteadily makes his way inside, deliberately does not let himself slam the door in his haste to get out of the moonlight.

- 

Fact: Another term for zanpakutou - the poetic term - is ‘soul of souls’. It’s so old and flowery that not even Kuchiki Ginrei would use it. Kyoraku did though, but he’s always been like that, pink kimono and all.

Fact: If Engetsu is his soul of souls, then he is Engetsu’s soul. So if she is his sword… then he is her body, to be used in equal measure as he uses her.

Fact: Engetsu is Isshin is Engetsu. Zanpakutou, soul of souls - they are an endless hall of mirrors for you to struggle with, only to realize it has been your own reflection this entire time. Growth comes from this: can you face the truth of yourself?

-

Bankai, Isshin knows, has nothing to do with goodness or intelligence or heart. Bankai, Isshin realizes, is a matter of self awareness.

 _Well_ , he laughs to himself, _Now I know why there are less than twenty known bankai wielders in the Seireitei._

Isshin’s not a good man, or a particularly smart one. He definitely doesn’t have much of a empathetic heart; he’s well aware of how selfish he is. _Engetsu’s a good reflection for that_ , he muses, _given the way she really doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but me_.

But self awareness? Check.

-

It is the half moon tonight. Isshin sprawls across the open doorway of his room, half in moonlight, half in shadow. He places his hands flat on the floor on each side, closes his eyes, breathes.

_Pressure on palms, push gentle but firm, and let it all float._

When Isshin opens his eyes again, he is miles in the air, drifting up and away from the twinkling lights of the Seireitei. Engetsu meets him halfway, swirling out of moonlight into human form. Her skirts, long and curving, gleam and glitter pale silver against the stars.

“I understand what you were trying to tell me, before. I’m done running,” he says, reaching to take her hand, gloved in darkness.

 _Do you? Are you?_ He flinches as her hair wisps light against his face, so cold that it burns. Her hair dims in apology, shade warming his skin again.

“I do. I am.”

_So tell me who you are. Are you Shihouin Yoruichi?_

No.

_Are you Kuchiki Ginrei?_

No.

_Are you Kyoraku Shunsui?_

No.

 _Who are you_?

Kurosaki Isshin. Soul of Engetsu. Yours.

_And what does it mean to wield me, my own?_

To wield Engetsu is to be wielded by Engetsu. There is no commanding, no riddles, no fight. There is not even one sword and one man. There is just their soul and their power, and the two of them who are really just one.

_So then, what will you do? How can you reach bankai?_

Isshin cradles her close, smiling down at her as she grabs his face, bringing them forehead to forehead, eye to eye. Her moonlight eyes are blinding bright, her storm dark hands breathing against his skin.

“ _We_ _reach bankai like this_ ,” they breathe together, and melt into each other.

 

.

2.

blurring starlight

.

Masaki could feel the emptiness of her powers draining, her blut vene out of her reach, but _there was no time_ -

She launched herself forward and shoved her son down, ducked hard left, the hollow’s blow whistling over her head. She yanked her son to his feet, Ichigo screaming as she dodged a second swing.

“East, Ichigo, run for help,” she shouted, shoving, and her son took off.

Her foot lashed out to kick at something that looked like a joint. At least she hoped it was. The hollow responded in a roar that sounded like it was miles away.

“Mom, help!” screamed Ichigo, but Masaki lunged to strike at the heat shimmer behind his faded form. Something slammed into her and sent her sprawling. She rolled, ignoring the dust stinging her eyes and the pain in her chest. _Damn, broken ribs, maybe_. The ground where she’d just been cracked underneath a giant transluscent hand, clumps of dirt and pebbles smacking her arms and face. She scrambled to her feet, jumped back from low swing of the hollow’s arm and started sprinting.

“As if you could fool a mother,” she taunted as she ran, praying the hollow would follow. She felt for the pinpricks of dim light with her fading reiatsu sense (bright little blaze moving fast towards shuttered lanterns in the east, _there!_ ), “You’re a failure of a hollow who can’t even catch a human child!”

-

Ryuuken arrived bow drawn and arrows ready, just in time to see Masaki fall. He was a strong, fully trained Quincy with family behind him and family injured before him, and Grand Fischer died before it could even try to make an apparition.

“Ichigo is safe,” is the first thing he said to her and she almost laughed in relief.

“T’anks,” she garbled out, and turned her head to spit out blood, “No reiatsu. Check on Kanae, Ryuuken, you have to-”

“Kanae is at home with the boys, I will check on her after you. Masaki, stay down, you’re about to go into shock,” Ryuuken said, grim. Her shirt was wet with blood, and she was pretty sure she had broken her leg.

“No ambulance - Urahara,” she gasped out, “If I die, gonna hollow-”

“So don’t die,” Ryuuken shot back, phone dial tones under his ear and hands steady on the gash in her side, “I’ll kill you if you hollow.”

“No, no, no. Kanae, Uryuu, Ich’go,” Masaki started to slur as her vision went black at the edges.

Darkness swallowed her.

-

Masaki floated in the void, watching Isshin’s moonlight dim. Her Quincy powers had been like starlight, pulling Isshin’s reiatsu strings taut to cage in her hollow, but all her stars were blurring and the reishi strings had started to snap as their anchors weakened. It was a matter of time before she hollowed.

She has had a decade more than she should have, but it wasn’t enough. Beyond her own desire to live, she wanted to be there for Ichigo and Yuzu and Karin, for Isshin and Kanae and Ryuuken.

_I need to survive._

It was not an impossible thought - there were others that have undergone hollowfication without soul suicide. Urahara knew them, so she wouldn’t die from hollowfication; it was just a matter of whether or not Urahara would have to kill her.

 _He won’t_.

(Here’s the thing - most people assumed Ichigo inherited his hair, his kindness, and his courage from his mother. But none but Isshin know he got his strength of will from her too, that world-bending, earth-stopping, indomitable will.)

Isshin's moonlight shattered in a brilliant burst. The skull of her hollow lunged and swallowed her up, smearing her world into shadow. Past its teeth was something wild and savage made of blood and bone.

-

The backlash of reishi strings snapping was enough to leave Isshin gasping on the floor. Kisuke made a mental note, listening to Kurosaki scream past the globs of white slowly forming her mask.

There was really no telling what would happen to Masaki. Even the Vizards hadn’t hollowfied while alive. At the very least, the mask and hollow hole under her collarbone were only visible to those who could see spirits.

Kisuke really hoped he wouldn’t have to kill her. He had enough blood on his hands already.

-

Bleach white fell at her, thick but formless. She threw up her hands because she couldn’t dodge floating in the dark like she was, but it dripped past her fingers to her head. She shook as much as she could off her fingers, went to wipe it off her face. Bone fragments scraped against her skin.

Suddenly white snapped forward and around her face, choking her with globs of white. She could barely scream, drowning in panic, curling in on herself and scraping at white on her face. It was the worst thing she’d ever felt, like someone was ripping her heart out of her chest, her veins and arteries from her body, until there was nothing left but a shell. She’d do anything to make it stop. Anything.

Anything?

Come to think of it, it wasn’t really a stabbing kind of pain but an aching kind of pain, like her muscles were sore, like she was hungry. Maybe if she ate, she’d feel better.

But what to eat? She thought of all the meals she’d cooked this week, this month, this _year_ , but it felt like even if she ate them, none of them would be enough to fill this hollowness inside her.

Hollow. The word made her think she should know something, should remember something, but it was a little hard to think when she was so hungry. Eh, no worries. Once she had eaten, she'd probably remember.

-hollow?

The thought wouldn’t leave her alone. She needed to remember before she ate, which was so very hard, but she tried. Who did she cook for yesterday? Herself, of course. But the portions were too big for one normal person, so who else?

… her mate, the one with dark hair and a strong jaw, steady with the children and -

Her children. She had… she has three. Two little ones who were still very small, and one she’d been teaching how to hunt-

_Ichigo. Karin. Yuzu._

Bone cracked as it snapped into shape over Masaki’s face and she gasped, finally able to breathe. The aching pain of hunger was still there, but she knew who she was. Her name was Kurosaki Masaki and she was a hollow.

-

Bone claws scraped along the edges of Tessai’s kidou, curious and testing.

“Kurosaki-san?” Urahara called. Black and gold cut to him, unrecognizing.

“Masaki,” Isshin said from where he was struggling to stay on his feet, “Masaki, please.”

“Sit down or you will fall over, Shiba-san,” Urahara murmured, readying Benihime. Isshin obeyed, slumping back down to the dirt, but he didn’t stop calling.

“Masaki, do you recognize me? It’s me, Isshin, your husband. We met when you saved me from a hollow, but you got bit so Urahara had to tie our souls together to keep you from hollowfying,” Isshin pleaded. The bone mask didn’t turn to acknowledge him, but he kept going. “We have three children-”

Claws went still.

“ _Ichigo. Karin. Yuzu._ ” It was a gutteral snarl, rough and odd to the ears, but it was a start and a victory. Urahara’s eyes met Yoruichi’s. Her head tilted and he dipped his chin in a nod. She was gone in the next breath.

“Yes! Ichigo is the oldest, he’s already nine! He’s got such a big heart, and he’s as stubborn as you are, honey. Karin and Yuzu are only five years old and they’re the cutest little girls ever!” Isshin was saying. Gold was utterly transfixed on him now.

“Shiba, if you have any pictures of your children, it might be a good idea to pull them out,” Urahara prompted. Isshin lit up and dug out his wallet.

It took another five minutes of Isshin explaining the story behind each picture before he felt Yoruichi re-enter their secret base.

“Shiba, hold on,” he said, “Kurosaki-san. Masaki-san. Would you like to see one of your children?”

“Urahara-san-” Isshin started, horrified, but Masaki cocked her head in interest and Yoruichi was already ushering Ichigo into full view.

“Mom?” Ichigo said, unsure. Claws flattened on the barrier, as if she was trying to reach him. Urahara deliberately didn’t tense at the sudden heaviness of her reiatsu.

“Yoruichi-san, is that mom?”

Layers of kidou shattered and tore under the force of bala-laced claws, and Tessai cursed, Isshin shouted. Urahara reflexively went to draw Benihime - but he caught Yoruichi’s eye. She wasn’t moving. He trusted her with his life, with his plans, and in this too, he trusted her judgement. He stopped.

With a rush of movement, Ichigo was scooped up and suddenly Masaki and her son were thirty meters away. Isshin scrambled to his feet, but Urahara put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Wait.”

“Urahara, you bastard, she’s a hollow, she'll go for family-!”

“Wait,” Urahara repeated, eyes on the pair, “Kurosaki-san wasn’t moving with harmful intent. But Ichigo is her son. She may attack if we approach too fast, even if it’s you.”

“Urahara-san,” Isshin said, voice almost breaking, “That is my _son_.”

“I promise I will step in if she moves to hurt him,” Yoruichi said, “But have faith in your wife. I don’t think there’s anywhere safer Ichigo could be right now.”

-

The purple lady said this was his mom. He wasn’t really sure how that could be true, but the guy with the hat had said his mom had a spirit injury and she might not wake up, and if she did, she’d be really different. So maybe this was the kind of different they were talking about?

His dad had looked scared, but he’s not really sure why. Sure, the rush of getting grabbed was startling, but it was only a little scary. Like a roller coaster. The claws looked sharp but they held him gently and didn’t hurt at all. The mask was kind of frightening, but the eyes behind it -

“Mom?” he said, reaching a hand up to touch her hair. She didn’t move, just stared at him with gold eyes.

And with uncertain hands, he reached for the edges of her skeleton mask.

“Can I?” he asked. There’s a long moment where she didn’t move, but Ichigo was almost ten now and he knew how to wait. He was rewarded with a nod.

When he pulled it off, his mom’s smile was waiting for him.

 

.

3.

dying sun

.

Kurosaki Karin grows up in the peripherals of death.

Mom’s hollowfication left her with edges just passable enough for human behaviour. When Karin was eight, a two-bit thug tried to mug their mother on a winter evening. Ichigo swears you could still see the bloodstains in that alley. And Karin’s not sure how Mom came in contact with yakuza, but organized crime keeps a wide berth from the Kurosaki household. It’s not until middle school that Karin realizes why Yuzu’s girl friends never walk home alone at night.

Mom puts all of them into martial arts, takes hours every week to teach them Quincy arts she can no longer perform, and lovingly educates them on how to make sure a dead body is actually dead. Funnily enough, Ichigo’s the worst at all of it - too much heart and too much power make for difficulty with control, Mom says.

When Karin and Yuzu are eleven, Aizen starts a war. Ichigo is the one to end it.

Her brother is only fifteen when he gets dragged in. When he makes it out a year later, it’s like he’s aged a decade. He tells them he’s lost half his soul, but he’s fine, no, really. Yuzu stress cooks and researches about PTSD, and Dad’s enthusiasm is constantly forced, leaving him walking on eggshells around the house. Mom nearly guts Urahara and doesn’t let any Shinigami except Rukia within a mile of Karakura, slaughtering the invading hollows herself.

Karin wants to scream.

So Karin is twelve and she is helpless. Karin is thirteen and she is angry. Karin is fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and she drives herself and Yuzu into the ground learning, practicing, pushing. She needs to ensure they won’t be leverage against Ichigo ever again, and fast.

When Karin and Yuzu are twenty, the Seireitei tries to start a war. The Kurosaki siblings are the one to end it.

-

Karakura lies in ruins. The living world thinks it’s some kind of natural disaster, a freak incident that makes the whole area unstable. They’re not entirely wrong. After the Seireitei’s initial attack, Urahara has kept the area as unstable as possible, trying to ensure humans wouldn't resettle there for at least a few years.

_Disperse the living population, comb the grounds for Pluses and force them to the Soul Society or Hueco Mundo. Dilute the concentration of spiritual beings and there is no more jureichi._

They’re determined that no more innocent lives will be spent because the Seireitei thinks they don’t matter. Karin honestly thinks the Seireitei shouldn’t take cues from that rat bastard Aizen, of all people. She also thinks they really shouldn’t have tried to kill every living human with knowledge of the Spirit World in the first place, but of course, the Seireitei doesn’t care what a mere human girl thinks of them.

“We just need to destroy their ability to mobilize on that level again,” Ichigo says, because her brother isn’t one for revenge. Not that his version of preventative measures will be any less devastating. “So we’ll need to break their motivation. We can split our goals roughly like this: break their soul-destroyers, cut off their access to the Royal Realm, and mess up their organization so badly they can’t coordinate well enough to try this again."

Mom, Dad, and Tessai are put on home guard and reinforcements. Yuzu will take Yoruichi and Uryuu for search-and-destroy of the Seireitei’s most powerful artefacts. Urahara and Orihime will accompany Ichigo while he moves to kick the Shinigami out of the Royal Realm and seal it. Karin is put in charge of what she likes to call the chaos team. She fucking loves this team. She argued with Ichigo and Yuzu for days, wanting to stack her team for viciousness rather than firepower. Among the people she grabs, she gets Mizuiro onto planning, because he’s a spiteful bitch on his best days, and Chad, because Ichigo doesn’t trust Mizuiro and her not to destroy everything. Chad doesn’t have a mean, tricky streak or sheer ruthlessness like they have, but he’s a tank with the rare trait of solid, practical common sense, so they like him anyways.

Case in point:

“You’re right,” she says, tilting her head thoughtfully. Urahara has been kind enough to provide them with a hugely detailed map of the Soul Society. Cute cartoon erasers pin various points of interest on the table. “Destroying their current portals to the living world doesn’t mean they can’t build more, but do we need long term lock out? We just need them to be stuck in the same dimension long enough for us to do things.”

“Can we do it fast enough, though?” Chad hums.

“I think we can,” Mizuiro says, “It’ll take them a good while to figure out who we are, since we’ll be throwing around all this Hollow reiatsu and they think we’re all dead. Also, Ichigo said he’s got Nel and Grimmjow ready to bring Arrancar reinforcements for us. If we have them run wild on enemy captains, that’s buys us a lot of time.”

“Timing will be super important then. Communications, transportation, and R&D have to go down before any fighting starts,” Karin points out, “Instead of running freely, we should ask them to target specific captains so we can still talk to the ones we think we can turn.”

Chad taps his fingers on the table. “You’ll need to talk to Eleventh before we do any of it, or they’ll be distracted.”

“I’d have to take Twelfth as my starting point then,” Karin counters, “Didn’t we want me on Omnitsukidou so I could hit the jail as my secondary target?”

“No, Chad’s suggestion is good, we need a solid sledgehammer for R&D. You’re capable of more straight up destruction than he is. And if you end here -” Mizuiro traces a trajectory on their map, “That puts you into a good position to fire straight at C46. Nothing like mass destruction to hold everyone’s attention.”

“Rukia stays on diplomacy. I'll take the portals,” Chad rumbles, “Lean on Tessai and Kukaku for Omni - explosives and traps might be just as good.”

"Oooh, that could work since we mainly want to crack open the Nest and the Senzaikyu, and catch the Inner Court Troup. I like how you two think,” Karin grins, “We should put Tatsuki and Hanatarou on point for that set up, and we’ll need to talk to Yoruichi about common routes. Okay, so dealing with the portals leaves Chad here, which means he can take the gate as his secondary target…”

-

Karin purses her lips beneath her face mask, watching Yamamoto step above the wreckage of the Twelfth Division to meet her. She isn’t standing right over the dead body of Kurotsuchi, because she doesn’t trust the shit stain to be dead even when he’s in five pieces. She’s burning the last of his remains from a good three meters away and up in the air, and her heat is crawling underground, eating away at the Twelfth’s hidden experiments. In her ear piece, Mizuiro is barking redirections to one of their contingency plans, Chizuru and Keigo reshaping their routes to curve towards her. They’d hoped Yamamoto wouldn’t take to the battlefield himself until later on, but what can you do.

“Intruder. You have ignored every cease and desist order, laid waste to one of our divisions, and killed countless shinigami. Surrender now and face the repercussions of your actions,” Yamamoto says, and it’s a rumble like a volcano. She can feel his reiatsu poised to attack, air warming in anticipation.

“You’re not even going to ask why?” Karin says, raising an eyebrow, “I’m always down to share.”

“Motivations are immaterial in the face of your crimes. Do not make me repeat myself. Stand down and surrender.”

“It’s funny you think a human is under your command,” Karin says, pulling down her face mask, “Which, incidentally, is also _why_ I’m doing this. Did you approve the Central 46 order for the Gotei 13 to use the jureichi to make a Royal Realm key?”

“Kurosaki Karin. I see our reports of your death were inaccurate,” Yamamoto says. Karin isn’t sure if she should be flattered that she is recognized this fast. “Central 46 has command over all sections of the Seireitei including the Gotei 13. Our power cannot be absolute, lest we become corrupt to our duties. Regardless, that does not excuse your actions. Revenge always begets more violence, child. Just look around you.”

“There is never an excuse for innocent deaths,” Karin agrees, smiling at him, “But there are reasons. I have one. I’m sure you usually have one too. Congratulations, you’ve just admitted that you were complicit in the attempted massacre of Karakura Town.”

She raises her hand, two fingers extended like a gun towards him. Yamamoto doesn’t move, probably because he can’t feel any reiatsu gathering. But this isn’t a Shinigami or a Hollow technique - it’s not even your standard Quincy technique. She and Yuzu created this one themselves, and it doesn’t need much more than a handful of reiatsu. Quincies specialize in reishi manipulation, after all.

“Nova to Central, fire in the hole,” she murmurs into her ear piece.

“Copy,” Mizuiro says, “Central to all, standby for sunburst.”

_Eyes on the prize. Breathe. Fire._

Yamamoto doesn’t flinch, but his eyes go wide when the Central 46 compound explodes, a solid two kilometers behind him.

“What have you done?” he breathes, shock and anger superheating the air around them. She watches as the last smears of Kurotsuchi’s blood boil and burn on the rubble below them.

“Central 46 believed they had authority over human lives, which is not part of their heavenly mandate. We have determined that they have attempted to unlawfully slaughter innocent humans for their own gain,” Karin explains, remembering Yoruichi’s careful tutelage and the cadence of this ancient, formal Japanese, “Central 46 is derelict in their duties, and have shown they have no honour, so we give no quarter.”

“You are outsiders with no understanding of our laws and traditions, nor do you have authority to declare such a thing,” Yamamoto decrees, just as formal. His cane unravels to his sheathed sword, and he draws, air around them already a haze of heat. “But I am not without mercy. You are a child who does not know better than to follow her brother. You cannot win this fight. Surrender, Kurosaki Karin.”

"I told Ichi-nii you wouldn’t listen,” Karin sighs, readying herself to stall him with a goose chase. Fortunately, Ichigo is a lucky bastard with perfect timing and Mizuiro’s an ace at coordination - Yamamoto and Karin are both witness to the broken body of Ichibe, captain of the royal guard, falling from the Royal Realm above and crash landing somewhere into the heart of the Seireitei. Mizuiro’s recorded voice loop comes on the Seireitei's speakers, right on cue. The same formal Japanese echoes through the city.

_The Shinigami are not gods. It is not your place to determine who lives and dies in the living realm. This is heaven's judgement upon your arrogance._

"Hawk to Nova, I'm in position," Chizuru pants in her ear piece, out of breath from sprinting to back her up. “Give him some pretty fireworks to stare at so I can snipe this fucker out of the sky, will you?”

Karin lights up her palms, blue fire and plasma snapping around her knuckles and lets a bit of her mom’s snarl creep into her smirk _._ “Didn't we just give ourselves enough authority, old man? You know, they said you’ve survived a thousand years, but all I ever heard was that you’re fucking ancient and frail. Hey, I always wanted to know-  when did your joints start to hurt? A hundred years in? Aww, that’s really too bad, cause us kids sure ain’t gonna slow down for you.”

The thing about Shinigami is that it’s all about _them_. They spend nearly all their time chasing self sufficient power, fighting one-on-one for honour, and using a handful of special snowflakes to make battles tilt in their favour. It’s not like their tactics aren’t there for a reason, but Ichigo says their tactics pretty much amount to a few powerful individuals pulling out more and more trump cards.

Karin and Yuzu had a good giggle imagining Byakuya carefully pulling aces from multitudes of card decks, then meticulously stocking his wide sleeves with them.

Humans, on the other hand, are much more used to being ordinary. They’re much more used to working together, from protests to riots to wars. Humans know how to network, know how to adapt, know how numbers and intel and timing matter. They’re a wolf pack going up against a few dragons who thought they’d burned the pack down.

It’s why they’re going to win.

(It’s not that Karin can’t fight Yamamoto herself. Urahara has estimated she could bring him to a standstill if she was willing to destroy everything in a ten kilometer radius. Give her another decade, and Yoruichi thinks she’d be able to kill him. But it’s not necessary - Karin isn’t fighting alone.)

The first bullet is a headshot. Chizuru isn’t playing around today. None of them are.

Karin breathes, but the battlefield doesn’t slow down for anyone. Mizuiro’s in her earpiece within two heartbeats, all efficiency and stress, “Central to Nova and Hawk, we assume you’ve got captain 1 down because you’ve got incoming in seven seconds, captains 8 and 13. Roadie has been rerouted elsewhere, tap in if you want reinforcements.”

“Copy. Captain 1 down, confirmed. Nova to Hawk, bullet type?”

“Kidou resistant nanites. If they save this one and want him to wake up, they’re going to have to negotiate with us,” Chizuru replies. Karin can hear the _clink_ of her rifle in her ear as Chizuru shifts. “Need me to swap?”

A whoosh of displaced air - shunpo, Karin’s hindbrain immediately identifies. Kyoraku and Ukitake are both in shinigami black, haori gone and hair askew. Looks like the Vizards gave them a run for their money.

“Nah,” Karin says, eyeballing them, “We might need them for these guys too.”

“Kurosaki-san.” She’s only ever seen Ukitake smiling and offering candy, so seeing him this grave is a bit disconcerting.

“Kyoraku-san. Ukitake-san,” she greets, and tilts her head to gesture at their collapsed mentor, “The old man isn’t quite dead. Yet. You should get him to Unohana.”

“Thank you. I leave this to you, Shunsui,” Ukitake says, sheathing his swords to heft Yammamoto up. He’s gone in the next second.

“Captain Kyoraku. Let us make this clear - if the Seireitei expects humans to follow their rules? They gotta be ready to follow ours,” Karin says firmly. In their enemy profiles, both Ukitake and Kyoraku are marked as negotiate-before-combat, since all signs point to the two of them being more flexible than their mentor. Karin really hopes Rukia isn't wrong about them.

“This isn’t the justice human law decrees,” Kyoraku comments, deceivingly mild. He stands with his swords ready but makes no move to attack.

Chizuru, watching through her scope, says, “Nova, looks like you’re having a little parley party. Bend some glass if you need me to shoot, I’ll interrupt if Central wants us to move.” Karin dips her chin in acknowledgement, deliberately doesn't look at her backup.

“If you want your enemy to understand you, you have to speak their language,” Karin tells Kyoraku, and sighs, “Look, we’re just trying to get you to leave us alone. Focus on the Pluses and the Hollows, let us know if we’re disrupting the flow of souls. Otherwise, let us humans live our lives in peace.”

“I’d like to say we will, but there are plenty of other interested parties that I can’t guarantee won’t bother you,” Kyoraku says evenly.

“Then change the system. Interested parties have power because people let them,” Karin says flatly. She shakes her head, looking past him to the chaos they’ve brought.

Beyond the complete wreckage she's made of Twelfth, they ensured that Central 46 would be meeting today, so there are plenty of dead bodies to go around. The building collapse covered Tatsuki’s explosives cracking open the Seireitei’s jails, and now Shinigami in black are trying to quell the mob of escaped prisoners. Vizards are fighting Omnitsukidou left and right, a few Arrancar weaving in and out of the carnage, the Eleventh Division happily charging in to wreak havoc. She can’t see it, but Hanatarou must be springing Tessai’s traps for the communication Omni officers, and there isn’t a Hell butterfly in sight, so Chad must have succeeded in all of his targets. Chizuru’s at her back, but both her and Keigo have already made multiple kills before coming to reinforce her. And it doesn’t end today - over the next few months, Yoruichi’s brother will be drawing back the Omni spies that monitor the Seireitei and Rukongai, and purging the ones that aren’t loyal to the Shihouin clan.

She did this. She planned this. She and Mizuiro had talked about this, their choices, this violence, all the trauma leading up to this. How much did their personal history affect these choices? Was all of this justified? Would it perpetuate more abuse? How do you move forward with the weight of your actions?

“ _I think… morality can often feel really subjective with things like this. You have to figure out for yourself how to live with your choices, good or bad, justified or not_ ,” Mizuiro had said, “ _What makes me feel okay with going through with this is knowing our motivation has always been to protect people who can’t protect themselves. The Seireitei can’t say the same about Karakura._ ”

“You know what would be human justice? You’d have been tried and found guilty for the war crime of genocide years ago. But humans aren’t able to hold that trial for you, and the Seireitei only rewarded you for your obedience,” Karin says to Kyoraku, a little distant, a little offhand, “My mom was a Quincy, you know. Talk about your sins coming back to haunt you.”

When she walks away, Kyoraku doesn’t follow.

 

.

4.

echoing sky

.

Yuzu tiptoes through the open hallways of an abandoned palace. The place is eerie - from one of the towers, she had seen that there were people living in the towns further from the city center, but here, in these grand halls of white marble and gold, there are only shadows and silence. It’s clearly of Quincy make, five pointed stars and clean, pentagonal shapes scattered through the towers and pillars.

It had been the oddest thing getting here. She had been tearing apart a soul warping spear in the basement of the Kannoji clan compound, and had taken a step into a little alcove so she’d be covered by the shadow if anyone came in. But her foot had never met the ground - instead, it was like falling through a mirror.

And now she’s here. But where is here?

 _I’m not entirely certain, but it kind of feels like the Royal Realm._ She’d only caught the edges of the Royal Realm dimension, but reality here feels layered in a similarly distinct way. There’s an odd undertone of Seireitei malevolence to the air, and given the sensation of falling _through_ \- a pocket dimension, then.

_A Quincy city right in the shadows of the Seireitei. Whoever did this had to be both bold and smart - no one looks for a mouse in the cat’s ear, but you have to be pretty gutsy to climb there in the first place._

Her earpiece crackles to life. It’s Yoruichi. “Raijin to Void. You’re missing our date.”

“Void to Raijin,” she murmurs, crouching in a shadowed corner, “Bit tricky to hit our rendezvous when I’m not in the same dimension. I confirmed Target 38’s destruction, then I think I tripped through a shadow. Feels like a pocket dimension mirroring the Seireitei? Lots of Quincy architecture, weirdly enough.”

“Hunter to Void! I think you ended up wherever these-” Uryuu grunts in effort, “-ingrates came from, damn Quincy army hijacking our assault. You must be right in their home base, get out of there _now_ -”

Static.

“Void to Hunter, I’ve lost you, are you okay? Hunter-? Hunter! Raijin, do you copy?”

Nothing. Yuzu’s on her own.

She takes a deep breath. The number one rule in the field is to never panic. Time to make her complicated problems simple. Step one, figure out how to back to the Seireitei in one piece. Step two, find her team.

_Okay, Yuzu, think. You fell through a shadow in the Seireitei and fell out of a shadow here. So there has to be some kind of resonance - and that means you can go back the same way. But you’ve been walking through shadows this whole time, and you haven’t fallen once. So it’s not always consistent - weak spots?_

So she’ll have to find another weak spot then, a physical space with strong resonance. Since it seems to be shadow-linked… time to find the darkest space in this palace.

Yuzu ghosts her way through empty corridors and stairs, away from the sunlight streaming through the open windows, but the inside is lit with floating, fairy-like light motes. Hmmm.

_Now, if I had a castle to myself, where would I not put lighting? Or rather, where would I definitely put lighting? Anywhere I like to be - and anywhere other people need to be… but only if I like them, so the darkest spot is probably the jail, yeah, okay._

Jails in this type of castle are usually in the basement, right? Probably? Yuzu heads deeper and lower, and deeper and lower, watching the corridor lights grow dimmer. On the right track, then - there! An unlit bend in the corridor ahead. Yuzu skids to a stop at the edge of shadow, peering into the darkness. It’s nearly pitch black, and she can feel how the layers of reality stick and melt together.

Here goes nothing. She breathes, closes her eyes, and tips forward to dead fall in and _through_.

Perfect darkness. Perfect silence. Perfect emptiness. What is this? Yuzu can’t even feel her body.

_I don’t need my body to feel this place._

Layers of reality again. Shinigami overtones, but louder than the Quincy shadow kingdom - and thin, woven lines of a layered, complex kidou holding together this tiny pocket dimension.

Well. Yuzu knows how to break those. All she has to do is _reach._

The seal is so strong it cracks instead of shattering, so Yuzu cranks _reach_ up into _hunger_. She’ll swallow the whole seal if she has to. Fortunately for her stomach, she feels the seal give, tearing into a hole big enough for her to crawl out of. Yuzu tumbles out of shadow and onto solid ground, gasping for breath.

“Kurosaki Yuzu. My, what a surprise.”

Her head snaps up. She freezes, deer in the headlights.

“Muken cannot be unsealed from the inside, and yet here we are,” Aizen observes. He’s bound to a chair in thick black ribbon-like lines, one eye covered. Black wraps litter the floor at his feet. “It seems as though the youngest Kurosaki child is just as interesting as the eldest.”

-

Let’s rewind.

Yuzu and Karin are fifteen, and they’re clawing their way to power, chasing safety and security. There isn’t much they can give their brother, but there is this - Karin won’t let them be a way to threaten Ichigo, and Yuzu will be damned if they let Ichigo cry over them ever again.

Karin hits her stride first - Mom knows how to handle explosively powerful reiatsu reserves, and Karin’s always been better with control than Ichigo. But Yuzu, month after month, fight after fight, even with Urahara playing semi-realistic threat, is all but invisible to anyone with a sliver of reiatsu sense. She feels so small next to Karin’s power, quiet and unobtrusively weak. After examining her, even Urahara is confused - she exudes so little spiritual presence, he’s not really sure how her soul is holding together _._

If she was alone, Yuzu is sure she would have resigned herself to weakness and spiralled into despair, but Karin drags her to her feet and makes her fight for the right to mope with her fists and her words. It works. Yuzu turns her focus to things she _can_ do, joins the archery club, hones her spiritual senses and stretches her range, starts messing with reishi manipulation. Karin and her build all kinds of techniques from Quincy tricks meant for children; none of them need more than a thimble full of spiritual pressure - even some of her classmates who can’t see ghosts would have enough - but all of them take master control to execute.

Then one day, they’re not careful enough. They’re young, they’ve been reckless. They’re very good at control - but consistency and endurance takes time they haven’t had yet. One of Karin’s kidou overloads and explodes, taking Yuzu’s leg and half of her torso with it.

Or rather, it should have.

-

“You’re Aizen,” Yuzu says, blinking away her surprise. She reaches up to activate her earpiece again, “Void to Hunter and Raijin. Hopefully I’m back on the right wavelength now. Ran into my last target, so I’ll leave 39 and 40 to you and skip to the end of my list.”

“I’m your last target, hm?” Aizen says, smiling amusedly, “And what is it that you planned to do with me?”

“Actually, my last target is the Hogyoku,” Yuzu says, just as pleasant, “It just comes with you attached. But don’t worry, that won’t be a problem for much longer.”

“I am fused to the Hogyoku and none can take it from me,” Aizen says, smiling like the most grandfatherly of her middle school teachers. It's entirely too smug and fond for Yuzu's taste, and about three levels of way too pretentious, “Though I suppose you may try, if you like- I must admit I am curious to see how far you get.”

“You sound like Urahara-san. All you scientists and your curiosity,” she hums cheerfully, “Well. Ichi-nii said it was in your chest, but you’re all bound up, so I guess I’ll have to settle for your face.”

Aizen watches her with a gleam of anticipation as she lifts her hand. Yuzu is pretty sure he doesn’t know what Karin and Yuzu have been getting up to in the past nine years, or he’d be much more afraid. After all, this man is the reason her brother lost half his soul, is one of the very few reasons Ichigo is still afraid, and Yuzu is aware she generally comes across as gentle, but in reality, she’s pretty terrible at forgiveness. Yuzu’s heard Aizen’s functionally immortal, but only because of the Hogyoku. Uryuu hadn’t been sure if Yuzu would be able to break its power the same way she can with other artefacts, but Yuzu has always wanted to try.

(“That’s quitter talk, cousin. I want him dead, so I have to make him able to die first. I’ll make it work,” Yuzu had said to Uryuu, because she was just as stubborn as her siblings.

“Last target, then, since we’re not sure if you’ll be too full to do anything after,” Uryuu had sighed, “Don’t die, Yuzu.”)

_I won’t. I promised you, cousin. I promised my sister and my brother too._

She sets her hand on Aizen’s cheek and starts to eat away at the Hogyoku's energy - and eat and eat and eat. It’s a sea of endless indigo and she is trying to swallow it. Anyone else would drown, but Yuzu is a black hole to her sister’s supernova, and she cannot be sated or overwhelmed. Beyond the blue, someone is screaming. It’s probably Aizen.

It feels like an eternity before Yuzu reaches the last drops. The brightness of the power she's eaten fades out of her vision, sound filtering back in as she lets Aizen go.

“How-,” Aizen gasps out, slumping back into his chair, “How did you take it - the fusion was supposed to be permanent, I don’t understand-”

He cuts himself off, staring at her, “You. _You’re_ fused with it now.”

“Pardon?” Yuzu asks, puzzled.

“Your eyes look like the Hogyoku,” Aizen says hoarsely, “I don’t know how, but you are its new master.”

 _The Hogyoku should have just vanished, but -_ Yuzu pauses to check, _Ah, there. He’s right_. It’s struggling against her, trying to hold itself together against her unconscious ability to disperse its energy. She tries gripping at it, searching for the threads of energy that could be used to tear it apart deliberately, but there isn’t a seam she can dig her fingers into.

_I can’t unravel it - but it’s made for use, there has to be a way to release it -_

“I don’t think I fused with it, but it’s still here,” she tells him, tapping her sternum, “I know how to deal with reiatsu and reishi, but the Hogyoku is made of souls, it’s being a bit stubborn. You made at least one half of this - how does the energy disperse back into the universe?”

“That is valuable information, little Kurosaki. Though I suppose I might be willing to give it up if you were to offer equally valuable information to me,” Aizen bargains, still a little wild eyed, “For example, if you were to tell me how you took the Hogyoku despite its fusion, I would consider that well worth answering your questions.”

_Mad scientists value knowledge above all else, and this is a man who chases power. So he wants knows how I took it so he can take it back._

But Aizen’s soul is bleeding, she realizes. The Hogyoku had been so closely intertwined with his soul that when she ripped it away, it was like slicing open every capillary - and she can see his soul bleeding through every wound. Even the most powerful soul would end up dispersing without entering the reincarnation cycle again, and Aizen, without the Hogyoku, is no different. Soon, the man isn’t going to be in any shape to answer her - he isn’t going to _exist_ in maybe two minutes.

Is that driving the desperation? Does he even know he’s about to die? She’s seen Ichigo’s soul bleeding before, and it certainly wasn’t painless, but would Aizen be able to tell how bad it’s gotten?

“Deal,” she decides, because she doesn’t have enough time for complex mind games, “I’m a sinkhole of reiatsu - I consume it, absorb it, scatter it. It’s how I broke out of your Muken thing, and how I took the Hogyoku from you. It’s kind of giving me indigestion, though, which is annoying.”

" _Fascinating_ ,” Aizen says, and Yuzu can practically see the gears turning in his head. Nine years in sensory deprivation has not been good for his poker face.

“Well? You promised me answers,” Yuzu prompts.

“Wishes,” Aizen answers, “The Hogyoku spends itself on wishes, little Kurosaki.”

And wow, that is a short answer that is entirely uninformative. Yuzu should have known he would cheap her out like this.

"Any wish? Like if I just tell it 'I wish blah blah', it'll use its energy to make it come true?" she clarifies.

"Nothing so pedestrian. One cannot simply _choose_ just any request for the Hogyoku to grant," Aizen scoffs.

_Maybe thirty seconds left to extract whatever he knows. Time's ticking, keep him talking, Yuzu._

"So what kind of wish does the Hogyoku grant, then?"

"What is your greatest desire? What is your innermost craving? What is the one thing you want most in the world, deep down where even you may not recognize it? These are the things the Hogyoku knows and grants,” Aizen rasps out, half lidded eyes staring up at her. He’s blurring at the edges, cracks creeping all through his soul. “What do you _want_ , Kurosaki Yuzu?”

"I want a lot of things, but right here and now, my desire isn't deep. It's simple - I want you dead so my brother doesn't have to be afraid," Yuzu says quietly, watching Aizen's soul shatter softly, the pieces twinkling into nothingness in the air. Black ribbon flutters to the floor, and then it's just Yuzu and an empty chair. "But I don't need the Hogyoku to help me with that."

_Major enemy target down, but you’re not done yet. Finish the mission, Yuzu._

Yuzu closes her eyes, taking hold of the Hogyoku's energy within her, thinks of her greatest desire, and makes a wish.

 

.

5.

breaking world

.

And in the end, the Soul King looks upon Yhwach, and _turns away_. And in the end, the Soul King turns to Ichigo, bows his head, crown disintegrating and reforming on Ichigo’s brow. Ichigo has borne the weight of Rukia’s soul, has shouldered the wilderness of his mother and the blaze of her inheritance, has walked with the knowledge of his mortality and carried the duty of Hell’s judges.

But this.

This is the heaviest thing Ichigo has ever felt.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> i am screaming i hate tenses and i give up on them
> 
> also editing? beta? we don't know her. we probably should introduce ourselves.
> 
> ... then again before this, editing was so much easier cause it was mostly just 1k at a time. i have never written anything this long. in the context of general fanfic, 8k isn't really that long, but 16 PAGES FEELS SO LONG WHEN EDITING, LET ME TELL YOU
> 
> okay if anyone is confused, notes on what went down:
> 
> \- basically canon plot went down for Rukia + Winter War arcs. how did this happen under Masaki's rabid Hollow protective instincts and without Ichigo having developed premature adulting behaviour* fueling his have-to-do-it-myself attitude? I don't know either ~~handwaves away irrelevant plot points~~  
> (*to me, canon Ichigo codes like an older sibling who has been forced to be a stand-in parent for their younger siblings due to lack of good parenting presence, which is the kind of behaviour I'm referring to.)
> 
> \- When Karin/Yuzu are about 20ish, Central 46 is like, wow there are so many living people who know crap. How about no. And they're like, hey most of our problem people live in Karakura, which, now that Aizen just reminded us a few years ago, is a jureichi, and can be used to make a Royal Realm Key (all canon! no printer just fax). So they're like, we can take out all our problem people and get a useful artefact out of it, let's do that that's efficient! And ofc the humans are very not happy and put a stop to that real quick. Karin's section about the Seireitei assault is directly after and is the humans' first non-reactionary response to the whole mess.
> 
> \- In Yuzu's section, she manages to fall into the Quincy realm pretty much right after THEY left it, because all Kurosaki have the devil's luck, I swear. Anyways, you might notice a snippet of Uryuu swearing about it - the Quincy attack pretty much 80% of the way through the human assault on the Seireitei. We're pretending the whole 900 years, 9 years, 9 days thing doesn't exist because I wanted Karin and Yuzu to be pretty much adults. Yup, that is in fact the only reason why. No child soldiers here.


End file.
